Richard Egarr

How well-tempered was Richard Egarr's clavier? The title of Bach's two famous books of preludes and fugues (Egarr performed the first) refers to tuning: it may be a given today that the space in pitch between A and B is the same as that between C and D, but in Bach's time this was far from standard. Musicologists still argue over what his idea of "well-tuned" actually was.

Egarr had his harpsichord tuned according to one of the most recent theories, which holds that what looks like a badly-drawn decorative swirl on the title-page of Bach's manuscript is in fact an instructive diagram. While his unforced, unfussy playing would have been engaging in any tuning system, this detail made our total immersion in the Well-Tempered Clavier especially fascinating.

Bach provides a prelude and fugue in all 24 possible keys, and for once we could hear where the idea that different keys have subtly different colours came from. The opening C major prelude flowed crystal clear, but in C sharp minor the music's mood was already turning murkier. G major sounded genial; G sharp minor was narky. The F major prelude was almost stickily sonorous, Egarr's left hand descending to the keyboard's boomy depths. And one could almost see Bach smiling wryly at the little harmonic kicks and glitches he saved for the keys in which they would make the strangest impact.

Only in the penultimate piece, the B minor prelude, did Egarr linger, his right hand lagging a fraction behind the left. Otherwise, his was a sincere, affectionate and light-footed journey through a seminal masterpiece.